On the Reichsautobahn to the Düsseldorf exhibition, 1937
From a moving car, the almost empty motorway runs under concrete and steel bridges, and in Düsseldorf visitors walk down an avenue of flags into an exhibition.
The view from a car on the motorway between Cologne and Düsseldorf: two concrete lanes between grassy embankments and pine woods, a black saloon ahead, a convertible with luggage strapped behind, slender concrete overpasses and a flat steel bridge on a row of columns, and scarcely another vehicle. At the end of the drive visitors in summer clothes crowd at an entrance, walk down an avenue of banners toward a hall with the emblem of the German Labour Front, and pass a painted sign to the cloakroom.
The Reichsautobahn, built under Fritz Todt from 1933, was the regime's showpiece of progress, though few Germans owned a car to drive on it. The exhibition was presumably the Reich Exhibition Schaffendes Volk, held in Düsseldorf from May to October 1937.
